EU’s €26 million publicity blitz comes under attack

STRASBOURG — Conservative and Euroskeptic leaders in the European Parliament took aim at the Commission’s new €26 million plan to promote the EU, calling it a thinly veiled attempt to avert a Brexit.

Reacting to a report in POLITICO, which obtained a draft document with details of the biggest-ever EU communications effort to date, some politicians are questioning the Commission’s plan for a mass-advertising campaign on how Europeans benefit from the EU and are suggesting that the strategy could backfire.

“The Commission risks shooting itself in the foot here and could receive far more free negative publicity than it bargained for,” said Syed Kamall, a British MEP and leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists group.

“There is no shortage of media across Europe reporting on the actions of the EU,” Kamall said. “The Commission might not like the editorial stance of some of it, but I don’t believe spending millions on advertising campaigns is going to help.”

Euroskeptic MEP William Dartmouth of the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) said the communications plan, titled “A New Boost for Jobs, Growth and Investment,” was simply campaign “propaganda.” He argued that the money budgeted for it should instead be returned to taxpayers.

“The massive new publicity campaign … is simply a desperate attempt by the EU to keep the U.K. in the EU,” Dartmouth said. “No amount of taxpayer-funded propaganda will convince people that being part of the EU is in their interest.”

But some MEPs applauded the idea. European People’s Party spokesman Siegfried Mureșan said the institutions need to explain how the EU is relevant to the general public.

“We cannot always complain that media is not reporting about the EU, or that citizens are not enthusiastic enough about Europe,” Mureșan said. “As policymakers, we need to find ways to reach the people in all corners of Europe; we need to find ways to explain Europe to them in a way which is relevant to them.”

He also stressed that it’s important to enumerate how the EU budget trickles down to Europeans.

“The EU budget is publicly too often discussed when Council and Parliament, as co-legislators, have divergences on this topic. But we talk too seldom about the many good projects which are financed in Europe through the EU budget,” he said.

Meanwhile, Socialist & Democratic party group spokesperson Utta Tuttlies said it’s the Commission’s duty to inform citizens about politics and policy, but refused to comment on the plan’s price tag.

“I think it’s important to inform what’s been done in Brussels,” she said.

A spokesman for the European Commission said the plan was not designed to influence the U.K. referendum. He also defended the cost of the plan, saying the program “does not involve any new or additional money – it is designed to be budget neutral.”

Added the spokesman, Alexander Winterstein, “In a nutshell, the Commission is rationalizing existing resources to focus on major issues — such as jobs, growth and investment — and to achieving economies of scale. This focus on optimization is particularly relevant at times of limited budget resources.”